Compulsory teaching of political literacy in schools (and give teachers the tools to do it!)

As a teacher, I usually loathe politicians getting too involved in education and making changes seemingly for changes sake, but here is an exception. The education system - mainly by design - has failed for years to produce school leavers who have a basic understanding of the political system in Wales (or even the UK). Yes, PSE is considered compulsory, but the content isn’t, and speaking as a teacher, leaving the content to the individual teachers or schools means it’s done inadequately or not at all (not teachers’ fault, I must say, when the resources provided are appalling and they simply don’t have the time and inclination to find their own!) Now we MUST do something. Next year 16/17 year olds will be able to vote in local and Senedd elections. In addition, more and more young people are genuinely becoming interested in politics, the one thing stopping them being more involved, perhaps, is that they don’t know how to! Politics and the education of democracy must be given a higher priority in schools. Political education needs to teach students how the political system works, how new laws are introduced, the differences in neighbouring democratic countries and finally how to become directly involved in Welsh politics. Politics is part of everyone’s life. We need to help young people recognise it’s not a dirty word!